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Video Rating: 4 / 5

I am a little confused on the law here in CA. I was in an accident early Saturday morning where I swerved from hitting a deer. Instead, I hit a tree. My car was down an embankment and where I was had no cell service. It was about 1am so there was no traffic nearby. I walked home to my house, roughly 6 miles away. After getting home I made a few calls to get my car towed out. After sleeping for a bit, I went up to get my car about 8 or 9am and it was gone. The CHP had already had my car pulled out. They never came to my house or called me.

When my car wasn’t there I called my local sheriff’s office who referred me to CHP. I spoke to CHP but the woman I spoke to was very concerned as to why I did not call them. I was under the impression that unless there was a death or serious injury I did not need to call the police. I did call for a tow and report the accident to my insurance company. I told her that I didn’t know I had to call and she didn’t seem to like that answer very much.

My questions are this?

1. Can I be ticketed for leaving the scene of the accident? Even though I had no cell service and there was no death or serious injury?

2. Does CA law state that I must report the accident to local authorities?

I’m going to have enough trouble dealing with my insurance company, I’m hoping this doesn’t also pile on top!

Thanks.

Best answer:

Answer by eat my pudding
You know, it’s funny, I had an identical incident happen to me here in the State of IL, an attorney costed the same amount as the fines the state was attempting to impose, so I hired one, and I beat the charges, I suggest you do the same! There was not another vehicle involved and it would have made no sense for you to stay with the car!

What do you think? Answer below!

Arizona Diamondbacks 9, Los Angeles Dodgers 4, Chase Field, Phoenix, Arizona (30)


Image by Ken Lund
Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark) is a baseball stadium located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, and is the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball. It opened in 1998 just in time for the Diamondbacks’ first game after coming to Arizona as an expansion team.

Construction on the park began in 1996, and was finished just before the Diamondbacks’ first season began, in 1998. It was only the second MLB stadium at the time to have a retractable roof (after Toronto’s SkyDome, now Rogers Centre; others are now in Houston, Milwaukee, and Seattle). It was also the first ballpark to feature natural grass in a retractable roof stadium.

It hosted Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the 2001 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees. The Diamondbacks won all four games at Chase Field, then known as Bank One Ballpark, and won the world championship that year in dramatic fashion.

Chase Field was originally named Bank One Ballpark after Bank One of Chicago, giving rise to its nickname ("The BOB"). After Bank One merged with New York-based Chase, the name change was announced on September 23, 2005.

In March 2006, Chase Field played host to three first-round games of the World Baseball Classic.

Chase Field is to be the home to the 2011 All-Star Game.

Chase Field’s roof is opened or closed depending on the game-time temperature. When the decision is made to close the roof, it is left open for as long as possible before game time in order to keep the grass alive. Even when closed, the park’s design allows just enough sunlight to play in true daylight without overheating the stadium.

The roof is closed three hours before game time, and a massive HVAC system drops the temperature inside the park 30 degrees by the time the gates open. Originally, the HVAC system didn’t work above row 25 of the upper level, exposing fans in the higher rows to the full force of the often-oppressive heat typical of Arizona summers. However, recent changes keep virtually all of the facility in air-conditioned comfort.

Chase Field also has a swimming pool, located in right center field, which is rented to patrons for ,500 a game. The ballpark also features a dirt strip between home plate and the pitcher’s mound, one of only two current ballparks to do so (Comerica Park in Detroit is the other). This dirt strip was very common in old-time ballparks.

The park’s foul territory is somewhat larger than is the case for most ballparks built in the 1990s. With 80% of the seats in foul territory, the upper deck is one of the highest in the majors. However, the park’s luxury boxes are tucked far under the third deck, which keeps the upper deck closer to the action.

New in the 2008 season is a brand new High Definition scoreboard in centerfield. The new scoreboard is 46 ft (14 m). high and 136 ft (41 m). wide and it cost million. It is the 2nd largest HD screen in Major League Baseball behind Kauffman Stadium.

The stadium was once the home of the Insight Bowl, a college football bowl game from 2001-2005. In 2006, the bowl game moved to Sun Devil Stadium, to replace the Fiesta Bowl, which moved to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale. The football configuration was notable because of the lack of nets behind the goalposts and the dugout behind the south end zone. The final Insight Bowl played at Chase was between the hometown Arizona State Sun Devils and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

The stadium also hosts occasional concerts and international soccer games. For football and soccer, the field is set up with the end lines perpendicular to the third-base line and temporary bleachers added on the east side.

Chase Field has also staged nine women’s college basketball games. The second game, which was played on December 18, 2006, was shortened by rain with four minutes and 18 seconds remaining and Arizona State leading Texas Tech 61-45. Venue staff closed the roof in an effort to finish the game, but officials deemed the court unsafe. In 2000, ASU had played Tennessee at the same facility.

Chase Field was also the site of the "Challenge at Chase", a college baseball game between Arizona State and Arizona. Arizona won both contests.[5] There was no game scheduled in 2008 and in 2009.[6]

In February 2006, the Professional Bull Riders hosted a Built Ford Tough Series bull riding event at this venue. Chris Shivers won this event with a total score of 181.5 points on two bulls, including an impressive 93.75 (out of 100) points on Taylor Made bucking bull, Smokeless Wardance, in the short-go round.

Monster Jam comes to the field every year.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Field

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a professional baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They play in the West Division of Major League Baseball’s National League. From 1998 to the present, they have played in Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark). Also known as the D-backs, Arizona has one World Series title, in 2001.

Between 1940 and 1990, Phoenix jumped from the 99th largest city in the nation to the 9th largest. As such, it was frequently mentioned as a possible location for either a new or relocated MLB franchise. Baseball had a rich tradition in Arizona long before talk of bringing a big-league team even started. The state has been a frequent spring training site since 1946. With the large numbers of people relocating to the state from the Midwest and the Northeast, as well as from California, many teams (most notably the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers) have normally had large followings in Arizona.

The first serious attempt to land an expansion team for the Phoenix area was mounted by Elyse Doherty and Martin Stone, owner of the Phoenix Firebirds, the city’s Triple-A minor league baseball team and an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. In the late 1980s Stone approached St. Louis (football) Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill about sharing a proposed 70,000 seat domed stadium in Phoenix. It was taken for granted that a domed stadium was essential for a prospective baseball team to be a viable enterprise in the city. Phoenix is by far the hottest major city in North America; the average high temperature during baseball’s regular season is 99.1 °F, and temperatures above 120 °F in July and August are not unheard of, but have only occurred three times.

Bidwill, with plans already in the works to leave St. Louis, opted instead to sign a long term lease with Arizona State University to use its Sun Devil Stadium as the home of his soon-to-be Arizona-based NFL franchise. Since baseball-only stadiums were not seen as fiscally viable during that era, this effectively ended Stone’s bid.

In the fall of 1993, Jerry Colangelo, majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, the area’s NBA franchise, announced he was assembling an ownership group, "Arizona Baseball, Inc.," to apply for a Major League Baseball expansion team. This was after a great deal of lobbying by the Maricopa County Sports Authority, a local group formed to preserve Cactus League spring training in Arizona and eventually secure a Major League franchise for the state.

Colangelo’s group was so certain that they would be awarded a franchise that they held a name-the-team contest for it; they took out a full-page ad in the sports section of the February 13, 1995 edition of the state’s leading newspaper, the Arizona Republic. First prize was a pair of lifetime season tickets awarded to the person who submitted the winning entry. The winning choice was "Diamondbacks," after the Western diamondback, a rattlesnake native to the region known for injecting a large amount of venom when it strikes.

Colangelo’s bid received strong support from one of his friends, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and media reports say that then-acting Commissioner of Baseball and Milwaukee Brewers founder Bud Selig was also a strong supporter of Colangelo’s bid.[1]Plans were also made for a new retractable-roof ballpark, Bank One Ballpark, nicknamed the BOB, (renamed in 2005 to Chase Field) to be built in an industrial/warehouse district on the southeast edge of downtown Phoenix, across the street from the Suns’ America West Arena (now US Airways Center).

On March 9, 1995, Colangelo’s group was awarded a franchise to begin play for the 1998 season. A 0 million franchise fee was paid to Major League Baseball. The Tampa Bay Area was also granted a franchise, the Devil Rays (to be based in St. Petersburg), at the same time.

According to the original press release from Colangelo’s group (which remained posted on the team website during the first few seasons) the chosen team colors were Arizona turquoise, copper, black and purple. "…Turquoise was chosen because the greenish-blue stone is indigenous to Arizona, copper because Arizona is one the nation’s top copper-producing states and purple because it has become a favorite color for Arizona sports fans, thanks to the success of the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns."[2]

In the earliest days, the Diamondbacks operated basically as a subsidiary of the Suns; several executives and managers with the Suns and America West Arena were brought over to the Diamondbacks in similar roles.

There was some talk (which actually persisted for a few years after the awarding of the franchise) about the Diamondbacks being placed in the American League West. Colangelo strongly opposed this, pushing baseball officials to allow the new team to play in the National League West. Colangelo cited the relative close proximity of Phoenix to the other NL West cities; the similarities between the two fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Denver (home to the Colorado Rockies); the long history of Arizona tourism to San Diego; the Firebirds’ long history as the Giants’ top farm team; and the fact that Dodgers, Giants and Padres games were broadcast in the Phoenix and Tucson markets for many years.

From the beginning, Colangelo wanted to market the Diamondbacks to a statewide fan base and not limit fan appeal to Phoenix and its suburbs. Although every Major League Baseball team cultivates fans from outside its immediate metropolitan area, and even though the greater Phoenix area has 2/3 of the entire statewide population, Colangelo still decided to call the team the "Arizona Diamondbacks" rather than the "Phoenix Diamondbacks". Many in Phoenix were not pleased by this; they felt this move lent a "small market" tincture to the team’s name. However, fans in other areas of the state generally embraced the "Arizona" title as a positive move to help make the team a regional team for the entire state, rather than just for the state’s largest city and capitol.

Tucson, Arizona’s second largest city, located about a 90-minute drive southeast of Phoenix, was selected as the home for Diamondbacks spring training as well as the team’s top minor league affiliate, the Tucson Sidewinders. Radio and television broadcast deals were struck with affiliates in Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott, and Las Vegas; among others.

A series of team-sponsored fan motorcoach trips from Tucson to Bank One Ballpark were inaugurated for the opening season and are still in operation to this day (it is now known as the "Diamond Express"). The Diamondbacks are also known for the "Hometown Tour", held in January, where selected players, management and broadcasters make public appearances, hold autograph signings, etc., in various locations around Phoenix and Tucson, as well as many small and mid-sized towns in other areas of Arizona.

Two seasons before their first opening day, Colangelo hired Buck Showalter, the American League Manager of the Year in 1994 with the New York Yankees.

Their lower level minor league teams began play in 1997; the expansion draft was held that year as well.

The Diamondbacks’ first major league game was played against the Colorado Rockies on March 31, 1998, at Bank One Ballpark before a standing-room only crowd of 50,179. Tickets had gone on sale on January 10 and sold out before lunch. The Rockies won, 9–2, with Andy Benes on the mound for the Diamondbacks, and Travis Lee being the first player to hit, score, homer and drive in a run.

In their first five seasons of existence, the Diamondbacks won three division titles (1999, 2001, & 2002) and one World Series (2001). In 1999, Arizona won 100 games in only its second season to win the National League West. They lost to the New York Mets in four games in the NLDS.

Colangelo fired Showalter after a relatively disappointing 2000 season, and replaced him with Bob Brenly, the former Giants catcher and coach, who had up to that point been working as a color analyst on Diamondbacks television broadcasts.

In 2001, the team was led by two of the most dominant pitchers in all of baseball: Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Arizona had postseason victories over the St. Louis Cardinals (3-2 in the NLDS) and the Atlanta Braves (4-1 in the NLCS) to advance to the World Series where, in one of the most exciting series ever, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City, they beat the reigning champions, the New York Yankees, 4 to 3, to become the youngest expansion franchise to win the World Series (in just their fourth season of play). That classic World Series is chronicled in Charles Euchner’s book The Last Nine Innings (Sourcebooks, 2006). The series was also seen as the beginning of the end of the Yankees’ stranglehold on baseball glory, as profiled in Buster Olney’s book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. All games in that series were won by the home team.

An estimated orderly crowd of over 300,000 celebrated at the Diamondbacks victory parade, held at Bank One Ballpark and the surrounding downtown Phoenix streets on November 7, 2001. This was the first major professional sports championship for the state of Arizona and the first for a team (in the four major North American professional sports leagues) owned or controlled by Colangelo, whose basketball Suns made it to the NBA Finals in 1976 and 1993 but lost both times. (Colangelo’s Arizona Rattlers won the Arena Football League championship in 1994 and 1997.) Colangelo’s willingness to go into debt and acquire players through free agency would ultimately lead to one of the quickest free falls in major sports history when in just three years, the Diamondbacks would record one of the worst losing records in all of major league baseball by losing 111 games.

The team won the NL West Division Title again in 2002, but were swept out in the NLDS by the St. Louis Cardinals.

By the 2004 season, however, the Diamondbacks had dropped to a dismal 51-111 record, the worst in Major League Baseball that year and also one of the 10 worst records in the past 100 years of MLB, despite Johnson pitching a perfect game on May 18 of that season. Brenly was fired partway through the season and was replaced on an interim basis by coach Al Pedrique. Before the season co-MVP (with Johnson) of the 2001 World Series Curt Schilling had been traded to the Boston Red Sox, who won the World Series in 2004 and 2007.

By this time Colangelo and the other partners were embroiled in a dispute over the financial health and direction of the Diamondbacks (and notably including over 0 million dollars in deferred compensation to many players who were key members of the 2001 World Series winning team and others). He was forced to resign his managing general partner post in the late summer of 2004.

Colangelo sold his interest in the General Partnership of the Diamondbacks to a group of investors who were all involved as partners in the founding of the team in 1995. The investors include equal partners Ken Kendrick, Dale Jensen, Mike Chipman, and Jeffrey Royer. Jeff Moorad, a former sports agent, joined the partnership, and was named the team’s CEO; becoming its primary public face. Ken Kendrick became the managing general partner.

Colangelo was sharply criticized for plunging the team into over 0 million in debt to secure the services of expensive veterans in order to field a competitive team quickly. In a 2004 interview with columnist Hal Bodley of USA TODAY, Colangelo defended his actions:

“ I understand where some people felt I wasn’t doing it appropriately. The only analogy I can use is that Tampa Bay (the other ’98 expansion team) went one direction and where did they end up? (Six last-place finishes and low attendance)…We went another direction to establish a fan base because our investment was much larger than Tampa Bay’s. And we put so much money into our own stadium (0 million). After the first year and the decrease in season tickets, I was convinced we had to build a fan base …We bought three division titles, a World Series and established a fan base …
…I believe what we did will last a long, long time …Right or wrong, a number of teams today are in the million payroll range and competitive – Oakland, Minnesota, Texas are examples. Our goal was to get returns from our farm system. We built into our cash-flow that we would be paying out the deferments and that our payroll could drop to million for a few years …A few things hurt us …The economy was bad, and I was hoping for more national money (from baseball’s central fund) coming in.[5] ”

Also a factor in Colangelo’s leaving his post was his advancing age: Colangelo was 64 years of age in 2004, and had he not sold his sports franchises, upon his death, his family would have been faced with having to pay high estate taxes based on the value of the Diamondbacks as well as the Suns (which he sold to Robert Sarver in the spring of 2004).[6]

Following the 2004 season, the Diamondbacks hired Wally Backman to be the team’s manager. Backman was formerly manager of the Class A California League Lancaster JetHawks, one of the Diamondbacks’ minor-league affiliates. In a turn of events that proved to be a minor embarrassment for the reorganized ownership group, Backman was almost immediately fired after management learned, after the fact, of legal troubles and improprieties in Backman’s past. Former Seattle Mariners manager and Diamondbacks bench coach Bob Melvin became the new manager after only a ten-day tenure for Backman.

Following the Backman incident, the Diamondbacks spent heavily on free agents in order to re-build into a contender. The club signed 3B Troy Glaus, P Russ Ortiz, SS Royce Clayton, and 2B Craig Counsell, among others. They then traded Randy Johnson to the New York Yankees, for Javier Vazquez, Dioner Navarro, and Brad Halsey. They then turned around and dealt newly acquired catcher Dioner Navarro to the Dodgers for Shawn Green, and sent Shea Hillenbrand to the Toronto Blue Jays. Finally, they traded Casey Fossum to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for José Cruz, Jr.

The Diamondbacks, led by Melvin, finished the 2005 season with a record of 77 wins and 85 losses. However, this was a 26-game improvement over 2004, and actually good enough for second place in the woefully weak NL West, five games behind the San Diego Padres.

The Diamondbacks were considered by some to be the favorite to win the division after spending big money on the aforementioned free agents; however, injuries hurt the team’s chances of reaching its expected potential.

Starting pitcher Ortiz was out for some time which really hurt the pitching staff. Glaus played with a hurt knee all season. Of all the free agents that signed before the season, no one had a better season than first baseman Tony Clark. Clark started the season as a bench player and ended the season starting and being an important part of the team. Clark was rewarded with a new contract at the end of the season.

In October 2005 the Diamondbacks hired 35-year-old Josh Byrnes, assistant general manager of the Boston Red Sox, to replace the out-going Joe Garagiola, Jr. as Diamondbacks General Manager. Garagiola took a position in Major League Baseball’s main offices in New York City.

In a weak NL West division, the Diamondbacks failed to improve on their 2005 performance, finishing fourth with a slightly worse record than the year before. The season did include two excellent individual performances, however. 2B Orlando Hudson became the recipient of his second career Gold Glove Award, as announced on November 3. Hudson became only the sixth infielder in major league history to win a Gold Glove award in both the American and National Leagues. He first received the award after the 2005 season as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, and was traded to the Diamondbacks later that offseason. On November 14, it was announced that RHP Brandon Webb was the recipient of the Cy Young Award for the National League. Webb, a specialist in throwing the sinkerball, received 15 of 32 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Webb went 16-8 with a 3.10 ERA and in the 2006 season was named to his first All-Star team. San Diego Padres relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman was second place in the voting with 12 first-place votes and 77 points.

In preparation for the next season, the Diamondbacks made several significant trades during the offseason. The Diamondbacks and Brewers made a trade on November 25, 2006. Johnny Estrada, Greg Aquino, and Claudio Vargas were dealt to the Milwaukee Brewers for Doug Davis, Dana Eveland, and Dave Krynzel.[7] On Sunday January 7, it was announced that Randy Johnson would return to the Diamondbacks on a two year contract, pending a physical. He was obtained from the Yankees in exchange for Luis Vizcaino, Ross Ohlendorf, Alberto Gonzalez and Steven Jackson. The Yankees will pay million of Johnson’s million salary. The Diamondbacks and Florida Marlins made a deal March 26 to acquire RHP Yusmeiro Petit in exchange for Jorge Julio and cash.

The Diamondbacks announced in early September 2006 that their uniforms, which remained largely unchanged since the team’s first season, would be completely redesigned for the 2007 season.[8] Details were supposed to be kept from the public until after the 2006 postseason as per MLB rules, but the Diamondback page from the 2007 MLB Official Style Guide was somehow leaked around September 25, and local media broadcast printed the new design for all to see. Of great surprise to many fans was a brand new color scheme; apparently the original colors used by the franchise since Major League Baseball awarded it to Jerry Colangelo’s ownership group in 1995 were to be discontinued.

While some fans applauded the redesign, most of the reaction to the new color scheme, which included the changing of the historical purple and traditional Arizonan colors of copper and turquoise to a reddish color known as "Sedona Red" similar to that of the Phoenix Coyotes and Arizona Cardinals color schemes, was pointedly negative.[9][10][11]

Many fans went so far as to call the 2007 D-backs a new and completely different team, calling the 2007 season a "re-inaugural year"; some fans in Tucson had banners reading; "Arizona Diamondbacks 1998-2006 – Arizona D-Backs 2007- " or "Exit Diamondbacks Enter D-Backs" and "Exit Purple Enter Sedona."

The official unveiling of the uniforms came at a charity event on November 8 in nearby Scottsdale, where several of the players modeled the uniforms on a runway, and posed for publicity photos.

The distinctive "A" design remained unchanged save for the colors. The stylized snake-like "D" logo, also used since the early days for the road uniforms, was slightly redesigned and a completely new shoulder patch introduced. The lettering on the jerseys was completely redesigned.

"Sedona Red" became the dominant color scheme used throughout Chase Field and in all marketing and promotional materials for the Diamondback ballclub.

After winning the opening game of the season on March 31 on the road against the Cincinnati Reds, the Diamondbacks found themselves with the best record in Major League Baseball, 20-8, by the start of May. At that time, they also led the NL West by 6.5 games. They lost the first series in May against the New York Mets, the first series lost since the opening series against the Reds. The Diamondbacks continued to lead the NL west despite only being 47-48 at the All-Star break.

On July 17, 2008, Tony Clark was traded back to the D-backs from the San Diego Padres for a minor league pitcher, Evan Scribner.

On August 5, Dan Haren signed a four-year, .75 million deal with the Diamondbacks worth a guaranteed .25 million through 2012 and including a .5 million club option for 2013 with a .5 million buyout.[12]

Orlando Hudson, one of the more consistent offensive D-backs players in 2008, underwent season-ending surgery on his left wrist August 9 in the wake of a collision with catcher Brian McCann of the Atlanta Braves. Hudson is due to become a free agent at the end of the season and speculation is that he will not be re-signed with the Diamondbacks, because he wants money.[citation needed]

LF Eric Byrnes was on the 60-day disabled list from late June, with a torn left hamstring, and was out for the remainder of the season.

On August 11, 2008, Dallas Buck, RHP Micah Owings, and C Wilkin Castillo were traded to the Reds (in last place in the NL Central at the time) in exchange for OF Adam Dunn. Dunn, who was tied for the major league lead with 32 home runs, was expected to provide a significant boost to an offense that has struggled to score runs for most of the season. Dunn seemed quite positive about being traded to a ballclub in first place in its division in August.[13] The move was seen by some fans[who?] as a belated attempt by the D-backs to counter the trade by their division rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers, for Boston Red Sox power-hitting OF Manny Ramirez on July 31 and also to compensate for the injuries to Hudson and Byrnes, generally considered two of the more "power-hitting" Diamondbacks on a team which has relied heavily on pitching and defense in recent years.

Owings, once considered an excellent pitching prospect for the Diamondbacks, struggled in the 2008 campaign with a 7.09 ERA after April 21.[14][dated info]

On August 31, the Diamondbacks acquired former World Series MVP David Eckstein to fill the hole at secondbase which was opened after Orlando Hudson was placed on the disabled list. Eckstein was traded from the Toronto Blue Jays for Minor League pitcher Chad Beck.[15]

They finished the season with a record of 82-80, (good for second in the NL West to the Los Angeles Dodgers).

The primary television play-by-play voice for the team’s first nine seasons of play was Thom Brennaman, who also broadcasts baseball and college football games nationally for FOX Television. Brennaman was the TV announcer for the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds (along with his father Marty Brennaman) before being hired by Diamondbacks founder Jerry Colangelo in 1996, two years before the team would begin play.

In October 2006, Brennaman left the Diamondbacks to call games with his father for the Reds beginning in 2007, signing a 4-year deal (his FOX duties remained unchanged).

The English language flagship radio station is KTAR. Greg Schulte is the regular radio play-by-play voice, a 25-year veteran of sports radio in the Phoenix market, also well-known for his previous work on Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals and Arizona State University (ASU) broadcasts. In February 2007 he agreed to a contract extension through at least the 2011 season.

Jeff Munn is a backup radio play-by-play announcer; he served as the regular public address announcer at Chase Field in the early days of the franchise. He is well-known to many Phoenix area sports fans, having also served as the public address announcer for the Suns at America West Arena (now US Airways Center) in the 1990s. He is also the play-by-play radio voice for ASU women’s basketball.

On November 1, 2006, the team announced that the TV voice of the Milwaukee Brewers since 2002, Daron Sutton, would be hired as the Diamondbacks primary TV play-by-play voice. Sutton was signed to a five-year contract with a team option for three more years. Sutton is considered one of the best of the younger generation of baseball broadcasters. His signature chants include "lets get some runs" when the D-Backs trail in late innings. Sutton’s father is Hall of Fame pitcher and current Atlanta Braves broadcaster Don Sutton.[16]

Former Diamondback and Chicago Cub Mark Grace and former Major League knuckleball pitcher Tom Candiotti were the Diamondbacks primary color analysts for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Former Diamondback player (and current Diamondbacks minority owner) Matt Williams also does color commentary on occasion, as does former Cardinals and NBC broadcast legend Joe Garagiola, Sr.., a longtime Phoenix-area resident and father of Joe Garagiola, Jr., the first GM of the Diamondbacks (as head of the Maricopa County Sports Authority in the early 1990s, Garagiola, Jr. was one of the primary people involved in Phoenix obtaining a Major League Baseball franchise).

The Diamondbacks announced in July 2007[17] that for the 2008 season, all regionally broadcast Diamondback TV games will be shown exclusively on FSN Arizona; and a few could possibly be shown on the national MLB on FOX telecasts. FSN Arizona is currently seen in 2.8 million households in Arizona & New Mexico. The previous flagship station, since the inaugural 1998 season, was KTVK, a popular over-the-air independent station in Phoenix.

Spanish broadcasts The flagship Spanish language radio station is KSUN AM 1400 with Miguel Quintana and Arthuro Ochoa as the regular announcers. They are sometimes joined by Richard Saenz or Oscar Soria.

Games are also televised in Spanish on KPHE-LP with Oscar Soria and Jerry Romo as the announcers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Diamondbacks

Arizona Diamondbacks 9, Los Angeles Dodgers 4, Chase Field, Phoenix, Arizona (33)


Image by Ken Lund
Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark) is a baseball stadium located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, and is the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball. It opened in 1998 just in time for the Diamondbacks’ first game after coming to Arizona as an expansion team.

Construction on the park began in 1996, and was finished just before the Diamondbacks’ first season began, in 1998. It was only the second MLB stadium at the time to have a retractable roof (after Toronto’s SkyDome, now Rogers Centre; others are now in Houston, Milwaukee, and Seattle). It was also the first ballpark to feature natural grass in a retractable roof stadium.

It hosted Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the 2001 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees. The Diamondbacks won all four games at Chase Field, then known as Bank One Ballpark, and won the world championship that year in dramatic fashion.

Chase Field was originally named Bank One Ballpark after Bank One of Chicago, giving rise to its nickname ("The BOB"). After Bank One merged with New York-based Chase, the name change was announced on September 23, 2005.

In March 2006, Chase Field played host to three first-round games of the World Baseball Classic.

Chase Field is to be the home to the 2011 All-Star Game.

Chase Field’s roof is opened or closed depending on the game-time temperature. When the decision is made to close the roof, it is left open for as long as possible before game time in order to keep the grass alive. Even when closed, the park’s design allows just enough sunlight to play in true daylight without overheating the stadium.

The roof is closed three hours before game time, and a massive HVAC system drops the temperature inside the park 30 degrees by the time the gates open. Originally, the HVAC system didn’t work above row 25 of the upper level, exposing fans in the higher rows to the full force of the often-oppressive heat typical of Arizona summers. However, recent changes keep virtually all of the facility in air-conditioned comfort.

Chase Field also has a swimming pool, located in right center field, which is rented to patrons for ,500 a game. The ballpark also features a dirt strip between home plate and the pitcher’s mound, one of only two current ballparks to do so (Comerica Park in Detroit is the other). This dirt strip was very common in old-time ballparks.

The park’s foul territory is somewhat larger than is the case for most ballparks built in the 1990s. With 80% of the seats in foul territory, the upper deck is one of the highest in the majors. However, the park’s luxury boxes are tucked far under the third deck, which keeps the upper deck closer to the action.

New in the 2008 season is a brand new High Definition scoreboard in centerfield. The new scoreboard is 46 ft (14 m). high and 136 ft (41 m). wide and it cost million. It is the 2nd largest HD screen in Major League Baseball behind Kauffman Stadium.

The stadium was once the home of the Insight Bowl, a college football bowl game from 2001-2005. In 2006, the bowl game moved to Sun Devil Stadium, to replace the Fiesta Bowl, which moved to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale. The football configuration was notable because of the lack of nets behind the goalposts and the dugout behind the south end zone. The final Insight Bowl played at Chase was between the hometown Arizona State Sun Devils and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

The stadium also hosts occasional concerts and international soccer games. For football and soccer, the field is set up with the end lines perpendicular to the third-base line and temporary bleachers added on the east side.

Chase Field has also staged nine women’s college basketball games. The second game, which was played on December 18, 2006, was shortened by rain with four minutes and 18 seconds remaining and Arizona State leading Texas Tech 61-45. Venue staff closed the roof in an effort to finish the game, but officials deemed the court unsafe. In 2000, ASU had played Tennessee at the same facility.

Chase Field was also the site of the "Challenge at Chase", a college baseball game between Arizona State and Arizona. Arizona won both contests.[5] There was no game scheduled in 2008 and in 2009.[6]

In February 2006, the Professional Bull Riders hosted a Built Ford Tough Series bull riding event at this venue. Chris Shivers won this event with a total score of 181.5 points on two bulls, including an impressive 93.75 (out of 100) points on Taylor Made bucking bull, Smokeless Wardance, in the short-go round.

Monster Jam comes to the field every year.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Field

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a professional baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They play in the West Division of Major League Baseball’s National League. From 1998 to the present, they have played in Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark). Also known as the D-backs, Arizona has one World Series title, in 2001.

Between 1940 and 1990, Phoenix jumped from the 99th largest city in the nation to the 9th largest. As such, it was frequently mentioned as a possible location for either a new or relocated MLB franchise. Baseball had a rich tradition in Arizona long before talk of bringing a big-league team even started. The state has been a frequent spring training site since 1946. With the large numbers of people relocating to the state from the Midwest and the Northeast, as well as from California, many teams (most notably the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers) have normally had large followings in Arizona.

The first serious attempt to land an expansion team for the Phoenix area was mounted by Elyse Doherty and Martin Stone, owner of the Phoenix Firebirds, the city’s Triple-A minor league baseball team and an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. In the late 1980s Stone approached St. Louis (football) Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill about sharing a proposed 70,000 seat domed stadium in Phoenix. It was taken for granted that a domed stadium was essential for a prospective baseball team to be a viable enterprise in the city. Phoenix is by far the hottest major city in North America; the average high temperature during baseball’s regular season is 99.1 °F, and temperatures above 120 °F in July and August are not unheard of, but have only occurred three times.

Bidwill, with plans already in the works to leave St. Louis, opted instead to sign a long term lease with Arizona State University to use its Sun Devil Stadium as the home of his soon-to-be Arizona-based NFL franchise. Since baseball-only stadiums were not seen as fiscally viable during that era, this effectively ended Stone’s bid.

In the fall of 1993, Jerry Colangelo, majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, the area’s NBA franchise, announced he was assembling an ownership group, "Arizona Baseball, Inc.," to apply for a Major League Baseball expansion team. This was after a great deal of lobbying by the Maricopa County Sports Authority, a local group formed to preserve Cactus League spring training in Arizona and eventually secure a Major League franchise for the state.

Colangelo’s group was so certain that they would be awarded a franchise that they held a name-the-team contest for it; they took out a full-page ad in the sports section of the February 13, 1995 edition of the state’s leading newspaper, the Arizona Republic. First prize was a pair of lifetime season tickets awarded to the person who submitted the winning entry. The winning choice was "Diamondbacks," after the Western diamondback, a rattlesnake native to the region known for injecting a large amount of venom when it strikes.

Colangelo’s bid received strong support from one of his friends, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and media reports say that then-acting Commissioner of Baseball and Milwaukee Brewers founder Bud Selig was also a strong supporter of Colangelo’s bid.[1]Plans were also made for a new retractable-roof ballpark, Bank One Ballpark, nicknamed the BOB, (renamed in 2005 to Chase Field) to be built in an industrial/warehouse district on the southeast edge of downtown Phoenix, across the street from the Suns’ America West Arena (now US Airways Center).

On March 9, 1995, Colangelo’s group was awarded a franchise to begin play for the 1998 season. A 0 million franchise fee was paid to Major League Baseball. The Tampa Bay Area was also granted a franchise, the Devil Rays (to be based in St. Petersburg), at the same time.

According to the original press release from Colangelo’s group (which remained posted on the team website during the first few seasons) the chosen team colors were Arizona turquoise, copper, black and purple. "…Turquoise was chosen because the greenish-blue stone is indigenous to Arizona, copper because Arizona is one the nation’s top copper-producing states and purple because it has become a favorite color for Arizona sports fans, thanks to the success of the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns."[2]

In the earliest days, the Diamondbacks operated basically as a subsidiary of the Suns; several executives and managers with the Suns and America West Arena were brought over to the Diamondbacks in similar roles.

There was some talk (which actually persisted for a few years after the awarding of the franchise) about the Diamondbacks being placed in the American League West. Colangelo strongly opposed this, pushing baseball officials to allow the new team to play in the National League West. Colangelo cited the relative close proximity of Phoenix to the other NL West cities; the similarities between the two fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Denver (home to the Colorado Rockies); the long history of Arizona tourism to San Diego; the Firebirds’ long history as the Giants’ top farm team; and the fact that Dodgers, Giants and Padres games were broadcast in the Phoenix and Tucson markets for many years.

From the beginning, Colangelo wanted to market the Diamondbacks to a statewide fan base and not limit fan appeal to Phoenix and its suburbs. Although every Major League Baseball team cultivates fans from outside its immediate metropolitan area, and even though the greater Phoenix area has 2/3 of the entire statewide population, Colangelo still decided to call the team the "Arizona Diamondbacks" rather than the "Phoenix Diamondbacks". Many in Phoenix were not pleased by this; they felt this move lent a "small market" tincture to the team’s name. However, fans in other areas of the state generally embraced the "Arizona" title as a positive move to help make the team a regional team for the entire state, rather than just for the state’s largest city and capitol.

Tucson, Arizona’s second largest city, located about a 90-minute drive southeast of Phoenix, was selected as the home for Diamondbacks spring training as well as the team’s top minor league affiliate, the Tucson Sidewinders. Radio and television broadcast deals were struck with affiliates in Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott, and Las Vegas; among others.

A series of team-sponsored fan motorcoach trips from Tucson to Bank One Ballpark were inaugurated for the opening season and are still in operation to this day (it is now known as the "Diamond Express"). The Diamondbacks are also known for the "Hometown Tour", held in January, where selected players, management and broadcasters make public appearances, hold autograph signings, etc., in various locations around Phoenix and Tucson, as well as many small and mid-sized towns in other areas of Arizona.

Two seasons before their first opening day, Colangelo hired Buck Showalter, the American League Manager of the Year in 1994 with the New York Yankees.

Their lower level minor league teams began play in 1997; the expansion draft was held that year as well.

The Diamondbacks’ first major league game was played against the Colorado Rockies on March 31, 1998, at Bank One Ballpark before a standing-room only crowd of 50,179. Tickets had gone on sale on January 10 and sold out before lunch. The Rockies won, 9–2, with Andy Benes on the mound for the Diamondbacks, and Travis Lee being the first player to hit, score, homer and drive in a run.

In their first five seasons of existence, the Diamondbacks won three division titles (1999, 2001, & 2002) and one World Series (2001). In 1999, Arizona won 100 games in only its second season to win the National League West. They lost to the New York Mets in four games in the NLDS.

Colangelo fired Showalter after a relatively disappointing 2000 season, and replaced him with Bob Brenly, the former Giants catcher and coach, who had up to that point been working as a color analyst on Diamondbacks television broadcasts.

In 2001, the team was led by two of the most dominant pitchers in all of baseball: Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Arizona had postseason victories over the St. Louis Cardinals (3-2 in the NLDS) and the Atlanta Braves (4-1 in the NLCS) to advance to the World Series where, in one of the most exciting series ever, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City, they beat the reigning champions, the New York Yankees, 4 to 3, to become the youngest expansion franchise to win the World Series (in just their fourth season of play). That classic World Series is chronicled in Charles Euchner’s book The Last Nine Innings (Sourcebooks, 2006). The series was also seen as the beginning of the end of the Yankees’ stranglehold on baseball glory, as profiled in Buster Olney’s book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. All games in that series were won by the home team.

An estimated orderly crowd of over 300,000 celebrated at the Diamondbacks victory parade, held at Bank One Ballpark and the surrounding downtown Phoenix streets on November 7, 2001. This was the first major professional sports championship for the state of Arizona and the first for a team (in the four major North American professional sports leagues) owned or controlled by Colangelo, whose basketball Suns made it to the NBA Finals in 1976 and 1993 but lost both times. (Colangelo’s Arizona Rattlers won the Arena Football League championship in 1994 and 1997.) Colangelo’s willingness to go into debt and acquire players through free agency would ultimately lead to one of the quickest free falls in major sports history when in just three years, the Diamondbacks would record one of the worst losing records in all of major league baseball by losing 111 games.

The team won the NL West Division Title again in 2002, but were swept out in the NLDS by the St. Louis Cardinals.

By the 2004 season, however, the Diamondbacks had dropped to a dismal 51-111 record, the worst in Major League Baseball that year and also one of the 10 worst records in the past 100 years of MLB, despite Johnson pitching a perfect game on May 18 of that season. Brenly was fired partway through the season and was replaced on an interim basis by coach Al Pedrique. Before the season co-MVP (with Johnson) of the 2001 World Series Curt Schilling had been traded to the Boston Red Sox, who won the World Series in 2004 and 2007.

By this time Colangelo and the other partners were embroiled in a dispute over the financial health and direction of the Diamondbacks (and notably including over 0 million dollars in deferred compensation to many players who were key members of the 2001 World Series winning team and others). He was forced to resign his managing general partner post in the late summer of 2004.

Colangelo sold his interest in the General Partnership of the Diamondbacks to a group of investors who were all involved as partners in the founding of the team in 1995. The investors include equal partners Ken Kendrick, Dale Jensen, Mike Chipman, and Jeffrey Royer. Jeff Moorad, a former sports agent, joined the partnership, and was named the team’s CEO; becoming its primary public face. Ken Kendrick became the managing general partner.

Colangelo was sharply criticized for plunging the team into over 0 million in debt to secure the services of expensive veterans in order to field a competitive team quickly. In a 2004 interview with columnist Hal Bodley of USA TODAY, Colangelo defended his actions:

“ I understand where some people felt I wasn’t doing it appropriately. The only analogy I can use is that Tampa Bay (the other ’98 expansion team) went one direction and where did they end up? (Six last-place finishes and low attendance)…We went another direction to establish a fan base because our investment was much larger than Tampa Bay’s. And we put so much money into our own stadium (0 million). After the first year and the decrease in season tickets, I was convinced we had to build a fan base …We bought three division titles, a World Series and established a fan base …
…I believe what we did will last a long, long time …Right or wrong, a number of teams today are in the million payroll range and competitive – Oakland, Minnesota, Texas are examples. Our goal was to get returns from our farm system. We built into our cash-flow that we would be paying out the deferments and that our payroll could drop to million for a few years …A few things hurt us …The economy was bad, and I was hoping for more national money (from baseball’s central fund) coming in.[5] ”

Also a factor in Colangelo’s leaving his post was his advancing age: Colangelo was 64 years of age in 2004, and had he not sold his sports franchises, upon his death, his family would have been faced with having to pay high estate taxes based on the value of the Diamondbacks as well as the Suns (which he sold to Robert Sarver in the spring of 2004).[6]

Following the 2004 season, the Diamondbacks hired Wally Backman to be the team’s manager. Backman was formerly manager of the Class A California League Lancaster JetHawks, one of the Diamondbacks’ minor-league affiliates. In a turn of events that proved to be a minor embarrassment for the reorganized ownership group, Backman was almost immediately fired after management learned, after the fact, of legal troubles and improprieties in Backman’s past. Former Seattle Mariners manager and Diamondbacks bench coach Bob Melvin became the new manager after only a ten-day tenure for Backman.

Following the Backman incident, the Diamondbacks spent heavily on free agents in order to re-build into a contender. The club signed 3B Troy Glaus, P Russ Ortiz, SS Royce Clayton, and 2B Craig Counsell, among others. They then traded Randy Johnson to the New York Yankees, for Javier Vazquez, Dioner Navarro, and Brad Halsey. They then turned around and dealt newly acquired catcher Dioner Navarro to the Dodgers for Shawn Green, and sent Shea Hillenbrand to the Toronto Blue Jays. Finally, they traded Casey Fossum to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for José Cruz, Jr.

The Diamondbacks, led by Melvin, finished the 2005 season with a record of 77 wins and 85 losses. However, this was a 26-game improvement over 2004, and actually good enough for second place in the woefully weak NL West, five games behind the San Diego Padres.

The Diamondbacks were considered by some to be the favorite to win the division after spending big money on the aforementioned free agents; however, injuries hurt the team’s chances of reaching its expected potential.

Starting pitcher Ortiz was out for some time which really hurt the pitching staff. Glaus played with a hurt knee all season. Of all the free agents that signed before the season, no one had a better season than first baseman Tony Clark. Clark started the season as a bench player and ended the season starting and being an important part of the team. Clark was rewarded with a new contract at the end of the season.

In October 2005 the Diamondbacks hired 35-year-old Josh Byrnes, assistant general manager of the Boston Red Sox, to replace the out-going Joe Garagiola, Jr. as Diamondbacks General Manager. Garagiola took a position in Major League Baseball’s main offices in New York City.

In a weak NL West division, the Diamondbacks failed to improve on their 2005 performance, finishing fourth with a slightly worse record than the year before. The season did include two excellent individual performances, however. 2B Orlando Hudson became the recipient of his second career Gold Glove Award, as announced on November 3. Hudson became only the sixth infielder in major league history to win a Gold Glove award in both the American and National Leagues. He first received the award after the 2005 season as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, and was traded to the Diamondbacks later that offseason. On November 14, it was announced that RHP Brandon Webb was the recipient of the Cy Young Award for the National League. Webb, a specialist in throwing the sinkerball, received 15 of 32 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Webb went 16-8 with a 3.10 ERA and in the 2006 season was named to his first All-Star team. San Diego Padres relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman was second place in the voting with 12 first-place votes and 77 points.

In preparation for the next season, the Diamondbacks made several significant trades during the offseason. The Diamondbacks and Brewers made a trade on November 25, 2006. Johnny Estrada, Greg Aquino, and Claudio Vargas were dealt to the Milwaukee Brewers for Doug Davis, Dana Eveland, and Dave Krynzel.[7] On Sunday January 7, it was announced that Randy Johnson would return to the Diamondbacks on a two year contract, pending a physical. He was obtained from the Yankees in exchange for Luis Vizcaino, Ross Ohlendorf, Alberto Gonzalez and Steven Jackson. The Yankees will pay million of Johnson’s million salary. The Diamondbacks and Florida Marlins made a deal March 26 to acquire RHP Yusmeiro Petit in exchange for Jorge Julio and cash.

The Diamondbacks announced in early September 2006 that their uniforms, which remained largely unchanged since the team’s first season, would be completely redesigned for the 2007 season.[8] Details were supposed to be kept from the public until after the 2006 postseason as per MLB rules, but the Diamondback page from the 2007 MLB Official Style Guide was somehow leaked around September 25, and local media broadcast printed the new design for all to see. Of great surprise to many fans was a brand new color scheme; apparently the original colors used by the franchise since Major League Baseball awarded it to Jerry Colangelo’s ownership group in 1995 were to be discontinued.

While some fans applauded the redesign, most of the reaction to the new color scheme, which included the changing of the historical purple and traditional Arizonan colors of copper and turquoise to a reddish color known as "Sedona Red" similar to that of the Phoenix Coyotes and Arizona Cardinals color schemes, was pointedly negative.[9][10][11]

Many fans went so far as to call the 2007 D-backs a new and completely different team, calling the 2007 season a "re-inaugural year"; some fans in Tucson had banners reading; "Arizona Diamondbacks 1998-2006 – Arizona D-Backs 2007- " or "Exit Diamondbacks Enter D-Backs" and "Exit Purple Enter Sedona."

The official unveiling of the uniforms came at a charity event on November 8 in nearby Scottsdale, where several of the players modeled the uniforms on a runway, and posed for publicity photos.

The distinctive "A" design remained unchanged save for the colors. The stylized snake-like "D" logo, also used since the early days for the road uniforms, was slightly redesigned and a completely new shoulder patch introduced. The lettering on the jerseys was completely redesigned.

"Sedona Red" became the dominant color scheme used throughout Chase Field and in all marketing and promotional materials for the Diamondback ballclub.

After winning the opening game of the season on March 31 on the road against the Cincinnati Reds, the Diamondbacks found themselves with the best record in Major League Baseball, 20-8, by the start of May. At that time, they also led the NL West by 6.5 games. They lost the first series in May against the New York Mets, the first series lost since the opening series against the Reds. The Diamondbacks continued to lead the NL west despite only being 47-48 at the All-Star break.

On July 17, 2008, Tony Clark was traded back to the D-backs from the San Diego Padres for a minor league pitcher, Evan Scribner.

On August 5, Dan Haren signed a four-year, .75 million deal with the Diamondbacks worth a guaranteed .25 million through 2012 and including a .5 million club option for 2013 with a .5 million buyout.[12]

Orlando Hudson, one of the more consistent offensive D-backs players in 2008, underwent season-ending surgery on his left wrist August 9 in the wake of a collision with catcher Brian McCann of the Atlanta Braves. Hudson is due to become a free agent at the end of the season and speculation is that he will not be re-signed with the Diamondbacks, because he wants money.[citation needed]

LF Eric Byrnes was on the 60-day disabled list from late June, with a torn left hamstring, and was out for the remainder of the season.

On August 11, 2008, Dallas Buck, RHP Micah Owings, and C Wilkin Castillo were traded to the Reds (in last place in the NL Central at the time) in exchange for OF Adam Dunn. Dunn, who was tied for the major league lead with 32 home runs, was expected to provide a significant boost to an offense that has struggled to score runs for most of the season. Dunn seemed quite positive about being traded to a ballclub in first place in its division in August.[13] The move was seen by some fans[who?] as a belated attempt by the D-backs to counter the trade by their division rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers, for Boston Red Sox power-hitting OF Manny Ramirez on July 31 and also to compensate for the injuries to Hudson and Byrnes, generally considered two of the more "power-hitting" Diamondbacks on a team which has relied heavily on pitching and defense in recent years.

Owings, once considered an excellent pitching prospect for the Diamondbacks, struggled in the 2008 campaign with a 7.09 ERA after April 21.[14][dated info]

On August 31, the Diamondbacks acquired former World Series MVP David Eckstein to fill the hole at secondbase which was opened after Orlando Hudson was placed on the disabled list. Eckstein was traded from the Toronto Blue Jays for Minor League pitcher Chad Beck.[15]

They finished the season with a record of 82-80, (good for second in the NL West to the Los Angeles Dodgers).

The primary television play-by-play voice for the team’s first nine seasons of play was Thom Brennaman, who also broadcasts baseball and college football games nationally for FOX Television. Brennaman was the TV announcer for the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds (along with his father Marty Brennaman) before being hired by Diamondbacks founder Jerry Colangelo in 1996, two years before the team would begin play.

In October 2006, Brennaman left the Diamondbacks to call games with his father for the Reds beginning in 2007, signing a 4-year deal (his FOX duties remained unchanged).

The English language flagship radio station is KTAR. Greg Schulte is the regular radio play-by-play voice, a 25-year veteran of sports radio in the Phoenix market, also well-known for his previous work on Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals and Arizona State University (ASU) broadcasts. In February 2007 he agreed to a contract extension through at least the 2011 season.

Jeff Munn is a backup radio play-by-play announcer; he served as the regular public address announcer at Chase Field in the early days of the franchise. He is well-known to many Phoenix area sports fans, having also served as the public address announcer for the Suns at America West Arena (now US Airways Center) in the 1990s. He is also the play-by-play radio voice for ASU women’s basketball.

On November 1, 2006, the team announced that the TV voice of the Milwaukee Brewers since 2002, Daron Sutton, would be hired as the Diamondbacks primary TV play-by-play voice. Sutton was signed to a five-year contract with a team option for three more years. Sutton is considered one of the best of the younger generation of baseball broadcasters. His signature chants include "lets get some runs" when the D-Backs trail in late innings. Sutton’s father is Hall of Fame pitcher and current Atlanta Braves broadcaster Don Sutton.[16]

Former Diamondback and Chicago Cub Mark Grace and former Major League knuckleball pitcher Tom Candiotti were the Diamondbacks primary color analysts for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Former Diamondback player (and current Diamondbacks minority owner) Matt Williams also does color commentary on occasion, as does former Cardinals and NBC broadcast legend Joe Garagiola, Sr.., a longtime Phoenix-area resident and father of Joe Garagiola, Jr., the first GM of the Diamondbacks (as head of the Maricopa County Sports Authority in the early 1990s, Garagiola, Jr. was one of the primary people involved in Phoenix obtaining a Major League Baseball franchise).

The Diamondbacks announced in July 2007[17] that for the 2008 season, all regionally broadcast Diamondback TV games will be shown exclusively on FSN Arizona; and a few could possibly be shown on the national MLB on FOX telecasts. FSN Arizona is currently seen in 2.8 million households in Arizona & New Mexico. The previous flagship station, since the inaugural 1998 season, was KTVK, a popular over-the-air independent station in Phoenix.

Spanish broadcasts The flagship Spanish language radio station is KSUN AM 1400 with Miguel Quintana and Arthuro Ochoa as the regular announcers. They are sometimes joined by Richard Saenz or Oscar Soria.

Games are also televised in Spanish on KPHE-LP with Oscar Soria and Jerry Romo as the announcers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Diamondbacks

Arizona Diamondbacks 9, Los Angeles Dodgers 4, Chase Field, Phoenix, Arizona (19)


Image by Ken Lund
Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark) is a baseball stadium located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, and is the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks of Major League Baseball. It opened in 1998 just in time for the Diamondbacks’ first game after coming to Arizona as an expansion team.

Construction on the park began in 1996, and was finished just before the Diamondbacks’ first season began, in 1998. It was only the second MLB stadium at the time to have a retractable roof (after Toronto’s SkyDome, now Rogers Centre; others are now in Houston, Milwaukee, and Seattle). It was also the first ballpark to feature natural grass in a retractable roof stadium.

It hosted Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 of the 2001 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees. The Diamondbacks won all four games at Chase Field, then known as Bank One Ballpark, and won the world championship that year in dramatic fashion.

Chase Field was originally named Bank One Ballpark after Bank One of Chicago, giving rise to its nickname ("The BOB"). After Bank One merged with New York-based Chase, the name change was announced on September 23, 2005.

In March 2006, Chase Field played host to three first-round games of the World Baseball Classic.

Chase Field is to be the home to the 2011 All-Star Game.

Chase Field’s roof is opened or closed depending on the game-time temperature. When the decision is made to close the roof, it is left open for as long as possible before game time in order to keep the grass alive. Even when closed, the park’s design allows just enough sunlight to play in true daylight without overheating the stadium.

The roof is closed three hours before game time, and a massive HVAC system drops the temperature inside the park 30 degrees by the time the gates open. Originally, the HVAC system didn’t work above row 25 of the upper level, exposing fans in the higher rows to the full force of the often-oppressive heat typical of Arizona summers. However, recent changes keep virtually all of the facility in air-conditioned comfort.

Chase Field also has a swimming pool, located in right center field, which is rented to patrons for ,500 a game. The ballpark also features a dirt strip between home plate and the pitcher’s mound, one of only two current ballparks to do so (Comerica Park in Detroit is the other). This dirt strip was very common in old-time ballparks.

The park’s foul territory is somewhat larger than is the case for most ballparks built in the 1990s. With 80% of the seats in foul territory, the upper deck is one of the highest in the majors. However, the park’s luxury boxes are tucked far under the third deck, which keeps the upper deck closer to the action.

New in the 2008 season is a brand new High Definition scoreboard in centerfield. The new scoreboard is 46 ft (14 m). high and 136 ft (41 m). wide and it cost million. It is the 2nd largest HD screen in Major League Baseball behind Kauffman Stadium.

The stadium was once the home of the Insight Bowl, a college football bowl game from 2001-2005. In 2006, the bowl game moved to Sun Devil Stadium, to replace the Fiesta Bowl, which moved to University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale. The football configuration was notable because of the lack of nets behind the goalposts and the dugout behind the south end zone. The final Insight Bowl played at Chase was between the hometown Arizona State Sun Devils and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

The stadium also hosts occasional concerts and international soccer games. For football and soccer, the field is set up with the end lines perpendicular to the third-base line and temporary bleachers added on the east side.

Chase Field has also staged nine women’s college basketball games. The second game, which was played on December 18, 2006, was shortened by rain with four minutes and 18 seconds remaining and Arizona State leading Texas Tech 61-45. Venue staff closed the roof in an effort to finish the game, but officials deemed the court unsafe. In 2000, ASU had played Tennessee at the same facility.

Chase Field was also the site of the "Challenge at Chase", a college baseball game between Arizona State and Arizona. Arizona won both contests.[5] There was no game scheduled in 2008 and in 2009.[6]

In February 2006, the Professional Bull Riders hosted a Built Ford Tough Series bull riding event at this venue. Chris Shivers won this event with a total score of 181.5 points on two bulls, including an impressive 93.75 (out of 100) points on Taylor Made bucking bull, Smokeless Wardance, in the short-go round.

Monster Jam comes to the field every year.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Field

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a professional baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. They play in the West Division of Major League Baseball’s National League. From 1998 to the present, they have played in Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark). Also known as the D-backs, Arizona has one World Series title, in 2001.

Between 1940 and 1990, Phoenix jumped from the 99th largest city in the nation to the 9th largest. As such, it was frequently mentioned as a possible location for either a new or relocated MLB franchise. Baseball had a rich tradition in Arizona long before talk of bringing a big-league team even started. The state has been a frequent spring training site since 1946. With the large numbers of people relocating to the state from the Midwest and the Northeast, as well as from California, many teams (most notably the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers) have normally had large followings in Arizona.

The first serious attempt to land an expansion team for the Phoenix area was mounted by Elyse Doherty and Martin Stone, owner of the Phoenix Firebirds, the city’s Triple-A minor league baseball team and an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. In the late 1980s Stone approached St. Louis (football) Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill about sharing a proposed 70,000 seat domed stadium in Phoenix. It was taken for granted that a domed stadium was essential for a prospective baseball team to be a viable enterprise in the city. Phoenix is by far the hottest major city in North America; the average high temperature during baseball’s regular season is 99.1 °F, and temperatures above 120 °F in July and August are not unheard of, but have only occurred three times.

Bidwill, with plans already in the works to leave St. Louis, opted instead to sign a long term lease with Arizona State University to use its Sun Devil Stadium as the home of his soon-to-be Arizona-based NFL franchise. Since baseball-only stadiums were not seen as fiscally viable during that era, this effectively ended Stone’s bid.

In the fall of 1993, Jerry Colangelo, majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, the area’s NBA franchise, announced he was assembling an ownership group, "Arizona Baseball, Inc.," to apply for a Major League Baseball expansion team. This was after a great deal of lobbying by the Maricopa County Sports Authority, a local group formed to preserve Cactus League spring training in Arizona and eventually secure a Major League franchise for the state.

Colangelo’s group was so certain that they would be awarded a franchise that they held a name-the-team contest for it; they took out a full-page ad in the sports section of the February 13, 1995 edition of the state’s leading newspaper, the Arizona Republic. First prize was a pair of lifetime season tickets awarded to the person who submitted the winning entry. The winning choice was "Diamondbacks," after the Western diamondback, a rattlesnake native to the region known for injecting a large amount of venom when it strikes.

Colangelo’s bid received strong support from one of his friends, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, and media reports say that then-acting Commissioner of Baseball and Milwaukee Brewers founder Bud Selig was also a strong supporter of Colangelo’s bid.[1]Plans were also made for a new retractable-roof ballpark, Bank One Ballpark, nicknamed the BOB, (renamed in 2005 to Chase Field) to be built in an industrial/warehouse district on the southeast edge of downtown Phoenix, across the street from the Suns’ America West Arena (now US Airways Center).

On March 9, 1995, Colangelo’s group was awarded a franchise to begin play for the 1998 season. A 0 million franchise fee was paid to Major League Baseball. The Tampa Bay Area was also granted a franchise, the Devil Rays (to be based in St. Petersburg), at the same time.

According to the original press release from Colangelo’s group (which remained posted on the team website during the first few seasons) the chosen team colors were Arizona turquoise, copper, black and purple. "…Turquoise was chosen because the greenish-blue stone is indigenous to Arizona, copper because Arizona is one the nation’s top copper-producing states and purple because it has become a favorite color for Arizona sports fans, thanks to the success of the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns."[2]

In the earliest days, the Diamondbacks operated basically as a subsidiary of the Suns; several executives and managers with the Suns and America West Arena were brought over to the Diamondbacks in similar roles.

There was some talk (which actually persisted for a few years after the awarding of the franchise) about the Diamondbacks being placed in the American League West. Colangelo strongly opposed this, pushing baseball officials to allow the new team to play in the National League West. Colangelo cited the relative close proximity of Phoenix to the other NL West cities; the similarities between the two fast-growing cities of Phoenix and Denver (home to the Colorado Rockies); the long history of Arizona tourism to San Diego; the Firebirds’ long history as the Giants’ top farm team; and the fact that Dodgers, Giants and Padres games were broadcast in the Phoenix and Tucson markets for many years.

From the beginning, Colangelo wanted to market the Diamondbacks to a statewide fan base and not limit fan appeal to Phoenix and its suburbs. Although every Major League Baseball team cultivates fans from outside its immediate metropolitan area, and even though the greater Phoenix area has 2/3 of the entire statewide population, Colangelo still decided to call the team the "Arizona Diamondbacks" rather than the "Phoenix Diamondbacks". Many in Phoenix were not pleased by this; they felt this move lent a "small market" tincture to the team’s name. However, fans in other areas of the state generally embraced the "Arizona" title as a positive move to help make the team a regional team for the entire state, rather than just for the state’s largest city and capitol.

Tucson, Arizona’s second largest city, located about a 90-minute drive southeast of Phoenix, was selected as the home for Diamondbacks spring training as well as the team’s top minor league affiliate, the Tucson Sidewinders. Radio and television broadcast deals were struck with affiliates in Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott, and Las Vegas; among others.

A series of team-sponsored fan motorcoach trips from Tucson to Bank One Ballpark were inaugurated for the opening season and are still in operation to this day (it is now known as the "Diamond Express"). The Diamondbacks are also known for the "Hometown Tour", held in January, where selected players, management and broadcasters make public appearances, hold autograph signings, etc., in various locations around Phoenix and Tucson, as well as many small and mid-sized towns in other areas of Arizona.

Two seasons before their first opening day, Colangelo hired Buck Showalter, the American League Manager of the Year in 1994 with the New York Yankees.

Their lower level minor league teams began play in 1997; the expansion draft was held that year as well.

The Diamondbacks’ first major league game was played against the Colorado Rockies on March 31, 1998, at Bank One Ballpark before a standing-room only crowd of 50,179. Tickets had gone on sale on January 10 and sold out before lunch. The Rockies won, 9–2, with Andy Benes on the mound for the Diamondbacks, and Travis Lee being the first player to hit, score, homer and drive in a run.

In their first five seasons of existence, the Diamondbacks won three division titles (1999, 2001, & 2002) and one World Series (2001). In 1999, Arizona won 100 games in only its second season to win the National League West. They lost to the New York Mets in four games in the NLDS.

Colangelo fired Showalter after a relatively disappointing 2000 season, and replaced him with Bob Brenly, the former Giants catcher and coach, who had up to that point been working as a color analyst on Diamondbacks television broadcasts.

In 2001, the team was led by two of the most dominant pitchers in all of baseball: Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Arizona had postseason victories over the St. Louis Cardinals (3-2 in the NLDS) and the Atlanta Braves (4-1 in the NLCS) to advance to the World Series where, in one of the most exciting series ever, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City, they beat the reigning champions, the New York Yankees, 4 to 3, to become the youngest expansion franchise to win the World Series (in just their fourth season of play). That classic World Series is chronicled in Charles Euchner’s book The Last Nine Innings (Sourcebooks, 2006). The series was also seen as the beginning of the end of the Yankees’ stranglehold on baseball glory, as profiled in Buster Olney’s book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. All games in that series were won by the home team.

An estimated orderly crowd of over 300,000 celebrated at the Diamondbacks victory parade, held at Bank One Ballpark and the surrounding downtown Phoenix streets on November 7, 2001. This was the first major professional sports championship for the state of Arizona and the first for a team (in the four major North American professional sports leagues) owned or controlled by Colangelo, whose basketball Suns made it to the NBA Finals in 1976 and 1993 but lost both times. (Colangelo’s Arizona Rattlers won the Arena Football League championship in 1994 and 1997.) Colangelo’s willingness to go into debt and acquire players through free agency would ultimately lead to one of the quickest free falls in major sports history when in just three years, the Diamondbacks would record one of the worst losing records in all of major league baseball by losing 111 games.

The team won the NL West Division Title again in 2002, but were swept out in the NLDS by the St. Louis Cardinals.

By the 2004 season, however, the Diamondbacks had dropped to a dismal 51-111 record, the worst in Major League Baseball that year and also one of the 10 worst records in the past 100 years of MLB, despite Johnson pitching a perfect game on May 18 of that season. Brenly was fired partway through the season and was replaced on an interim basis by coach Al Pedrique. Before the season co-MVP (with Johnson) of the 2001 World Series Curt Schilling had been traded to the Boston Red Sox, who won the World Series in 2004 and 2007.

By this time Colangelo and the other partners were embroiled in a dispute over the financial health and direction of the Diamondbacks (and notably including over 0 million dollars in deferred compensation to many players who were key members of the 2001 World Series winning team and others). He was forced to resign his managing general partner post in the late summer of 2004.

Colangelo sold his interest in the General Partnership of the Diamondbacks to a group of investors who were all involved as partners in the founding of the team in 1995. The investors include equal partners Ken Kendrick, Dale Jensen, Mike Chipman, and Jeffrey Royer. Jeff Moorad, a former sports agent, joined the partnership, and was named the team’s CEO; becoming its primary public face. Ken Kendrick became the managing general partner.

Colangelo was sharply criticized for plunging the team into over 0 million in debt to secure the services of expensive veterans in order to field a competitive team quickly. In a 2004 interview with columnist Hal Bodley of USA TODAY, Colangelo defended his actions:

“ I understand where some people felt I wasn’t doing it appropriately. The only analogy I can use is that Tampa Bay (the other ’98 expansion team) went one direction and where did they end up? (Six last-place finishes and low attendance)…We went another direction to establish a fan base because our investment was much larger than Tampa Bay’s. And we put so much money into our own stadium (0 million). After the first year and the decrease in season tickets, I was convinced we had to build a fan base …We bought three division titles, a World Series and established a fan base …
…I believe what we did will last a long, long time …Right or wrong, a number of teams today are in the million payroll range and competitive – Oakland, Minnesota, Texas are examples. Our goal was to get returns from our farm system. We built into our cash-flow that we would be paying out the deferments and that our payroll could drop to million for a few years …A few things hurt us …The economy was bad, and I was hoping for more national money (from baseball’s central fund) coming in.[5] ”

Also a factor in Colangelo’s leaving his post was his advancing age: Colangelo was 64 years of age in 2004, and had he not sold his sports franchises, upon his death, his family would have been faced with having to pay high estate taxes based on the value of the Diamondbacks as well as the Suns (which he sold to Robert Sarver in the spring of 2004).[6]

Following the 2004 season, the Diamondbacks hired Wally Backman to be the team’s manager. Backman was formerly manager of the Class A California League Lancaster JetHawks, one of the Diamondbacks’ minor-league affiliates. In a turn of events that proved to be a minor embarrassment for the reorganized ownership group, Backman was almost immediately fired after management learned, after the fact, of legal troubles and improprieties in Backman’s past. Former Seattle Mariners manager and Diamondbacks bench coach Bob Melvin became the new manager after only a ten-day tenure for Backman.

Following the Backman incident, the Diamondbacks spent heavily on free agents in order to re-build into a contender. The club signed 3B Troy Glaus, P Russ Ortiz, SS Royce Clayton, and 2B Craig Counsell, among others. They then traded Randy Johnson to the New York Yankees, for Javier Vazquez, Dioner Navarro, and Brad Halsey. They then turned around and dealt newly acquired catcher Dioner Navarro to the Dodgers for Shawn Green, and sent Shea Hillenbrand to the Toronto Blue Jays. Finally, they traded Casey Fossum to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for José Cruz, Jr.

The Diamondbacks, led by Melvin, finished the 2005 season with a record of 77 wins and 85 losses. However, this was a 26-game improvement over 2004, and actually good enough for second place in the woefully weak NL West, five games behind the San Diego Padres.

The Diamondbacks were considered by some to be the favorite to win the division after spending big money on the aforementioned free agents; however, injuries hurt the team’s chances of reaching its expected potential.

Starting pitcher Ortiz was out for some time which really hurt the pitching staff. Glaus played with a hurt knee all season. Of all the free agents that signed before the season, no one had a better season than first baseman Tony Clark. Clark started the season as a bench player and ended the season starting and being an important part of the team. Clark was rewarded with a new contract at the end of the season.

In October 2005 the Diamondbacks hired 35-year-old Josh Byrnes, assistant general manager of the Boston Red Sox, to replace the out-going Joe Garagiola, Jr. as Diamondbacks General Manager. Garagiola took a position in Major League Baseball’s main offices in New York City.

In a weak NL West division, the Diamondbacks failed to improve on their 2005 performance, finishing fourth with a slightly worse record than the year before. The season did include two excellent individual performances, however. 2B Orlando Hudson became the recipient of his second career Gold Glove Award, as announced on November 3. Hudson became only the sixth infielder in major league history to win a Gold Glove award in both the American and National Leagues. He first received the award after the 2005 season as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, and was traded to the Diamondbacks later that offseason. On November 14, it was announced that RHP Brandon Webb was the recipient of the Cy Young Award for the National League. Webb, a specialist in throwing the sinkerball, received 15 of 32 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Webb went 16-8 with a 3.10 ERA and in the 2006 season was named to his first All-Star team. San Diego Padres relief pitcher Trevor Hoffman was second place in the voting with 12 first-place votes and 77 points.

In preparation for the next season, the Diamondbacks made several significant trades during the offseason. The Diamondbacks and Brewers made a trade on November 25, 2006. Johnny Estrada, Greg Aquino, and Claudio Vargas were dealt to the Milwaukee Brewers for Doug Davis, Dana Eveland, and Dave Krynzel.[7] On Sunday January 7, it was announced that Randy Johnson would return to the Diamondbacks on a two year contract, pending a physical. He was obtained from the Yankees in exchange for Luis Vizcaino, Ross Ohlendorf, Alberto Gonzalez and Steven Jackson. The Yankees will pay million of Johnson’s million salary. The Diamondbacks and Florida Marlins made a deal March 26 to acquire RHP Yusmeiro Petit in exchange for Jorge Julio and cash.

The Diamondbacks announced in early September 2006 that their uniforms, which remained largely unchanged since the team’s first season, would be completely redesigned for the 2007 season.[8] Details were supposed to be kept from the public until after the 2006 postseason as per MLB rules, but the Diamondback page from the 2007 MLB Official Style Guide was somehow leaked around September 25, and local media broadcast printed the new design for all to see. Of great surprise to many fans was a brand new color scheme; apparently the original colors used by the franchise since Major League Baseball awarded it to Jerry Colangelo’s ownership group in 1995 were to be discontinued.

While some fans applauded the redesign, most of the reaction to the new color scheme, which included the changing of the historical purple and traditional Arizonan colors of copper and turquoise to a reddish color known as "Sedona Red" similar to that of the Phoenix Coyotes and Arizona Cardinals color schemes, was pointedly negative.[9][10][11]

Many fans went so far as to call the 2007 D-backs a new and completely different team, calling the 2007 season a "re-inaugural year"; some fans in Tucson had banners reading; "Arizona Diamondbacks 1998-2006 – Arizona D-Backs 2007- " or "Exit Diamondbacks Enter D-Backs" and "Exit Purple Enter Sedona."

The official unveiling of the uniforms came at a charity event on November 8 in nearby Scottsdale, where several of the players modeled the uniforms on a runway, and posed for publicity photos.

The distinctive "A" design remained unchanged save for the colors. The stylized snake-like "D" logo, also used since the early days for the road uniforms, was slightly redesigned and a completely new shoulder patch introduced. The lettering on the jerseys was completely redesigned.

"Sedona Red" became the dominant color scheme used throughout Chase Field and in all marketing and promotional materials for the Diamondback ballclub.

After winning the opening game of the season on March 31 on the road against the Cincinnati Reds, the Diamondbacks found themselves with the best record in Major League Baseball, 20-8, by the start of May. At that time, they also led the NL West by 6.5 games. They lost the first series in May against the New York Mets, the first series lost since the opening series against the Reds. The Diamondbacks continued to lead the NL west despite only being 47-48 at the All-Star break.

On July 17, 2008, Tony Clark was traded back to the D-backs from the San Diego Padres for a minor league pitcher, Evan Scribner.

On August 5, Dan Haren signed a four-year, .75 million deal with the Diamondbacks worth a guaranteed .25 million through 2012 and including a .5 million club option for 2013 with a .5 million buyout.[12]

Orlando Hudson, one of the more consistent offensive D-backs players in 2008, underwent season-ending surgery on his left wrist August 9 in the wake of a collision with catcher Brian McCann of the Atlanta Braves. Hudson is due to become a free agent at the end of the season and speculation is that he will not be re-signed with the Diamondbacks, because he wants money.[citation needed]

LF Eric Byrnes was on the 60-day disabled list from late June, with a torn left hamstring, and was out for the remainder of the season.

On August 11, 2008, Dallas Buck, RHP Micah Owings, and C Wilkin Castillo were traded to the Reds (in last place in the NL Central at the time) in exchange for OF Adam Dunn. Dunn, who was tied for the major league lead with 32 home runs, was expected to provide a significant boost to an offense that has struggled to score runs for most of the season. Dunn seemed quite positive about being traded to a ballclub in first place in its division in August.[13] The move was seen by some fans[who?] as a belated attempt by the D-backs to counter the trade by their division rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers, for Boston Red Sox power-hitting OF Manny Ramirez on July 31 and also to compensate for the injuries to Hudson and Byrnes, generally considered two of the more "power-hitting" Diamondbacks on a team which has relied heavily on pitching and defense in recent years.

Owings, once considered an excellent pitching prospect for the Diamondbacks, struggled in the 2008 campaign with a 7.09 ERA after April 21.[14][dated info]

On August 31, the Diamondbacks acquired former World Series MVP David Eckstein to fill the hole at secondbase which was opened after Orlando Hudson was placed on the disabled list. Eckstein was traded from the Toronto Blue Jays for Minor League pitcher Chad Beck.[15]

They finished the season with a record of 82-80, (good for second in the NL West to the Los Angeles Dodgers).

The primary television play-by-play voice for the team’s first nine seasons of play was Thom Brennaman, who also broadcasts baseball and college football games nationally for FOX Television. Brennaman was the TV announcer for the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds (along with his father Marty Brennaman) before being hired by Diamondbacks founder Jerry Colangelo in 1996, two years before the team would begin play.

In October 2006, Brennaman left the Diamondbacks to call games with his father for the Reds beginning in 2007, signing a 4-year deal (his FOX duties remained unchanged).

The English language flagship radio station is KTAR. Greg Schulte is the regular radio play-by-play voice, a 25-year veteran of sports radio in the Phoenix market, also well-known for his previous work on Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals and Arizona State University (ASU) broadcasts. In February 2007 he agreed to a contract extension through at least the 2011 season.

Jeff Munn is a backup radio play-by-play announcer; he served as the regular public address announcer at Chase Field in the early days of the franchise. He is well-known to many Phoenix area sports fans, having also served as the public address announcer for the Suns at America West Arena (now US Airways Center) in the 1990s. He is also the play-by-play radio voice for ASU women’s basketball.

On November 1, 2006, the team announced that the TV voice of the Milwaukee Brewers since 2002, Daron Sutton, would be hired as the Diamondbacks primary TV play-by-play voice. Sutton was signed to a five-year contract with a team option for three more years. Sutton is considered one of the best of the younger generation of baseball broadcasters. His signature chants include "lets get some runs" when the D-Backs trail in late innings. Sutton’s father is Hall of Fame pitcher and current Atlanta Braves broadcaster Don Sutton.[16]

Former Diamondback and Chicago Cub Mark Grace and former Major League knuckleball pitcher Tom Candiotti were the Diamondbacks primary color analysts for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Former Diamondback player (and current Diamondbacks minority owner) Matt Williams also does color commentary on occasion, as does former Cardinals and NBC broadcast legend Joe Garagiola, Sr.., a longtime Phoenix-area resident and father of Joe Garagiola, Jr., the first GM of the Diamondbacks (as head of the Maricopa County Sports Authority in the early 1990s, Garagiola, Jr. was one of the primary people involved in Phoenix obtaining a Major League Baseball franchise).

The Diamondbacks announced in July 2007[17] that for the 2008 season, all regionally broadcast Diamondback TV games will be shown exclusively on FSN Arizona; and a few could possibly be shown on the national MLB on FOX telecasts. FSN Arizona is currently seen in 2.8 million households in Arizona & New Mexico. The previous flagship station, since the inaugural 1998 season, was KTVK, a popular over-the-air independent station in Phoenix.

Spanish broadcasts The flagship Spanish language radio station is KSUN AM 1400 with Miguel Quintana and Arthuro Ochoa as the regular announcers. They are sometimes joined by Richard Saenz or Oscar Soria.

Games are also televised in Spanish on KPHE-LP with Oscar Soria and Jerry Romo as the announcers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Diamondbacks

Question by autumnpickett@rocketmail.com: does any one any good office games like the miss management game or somthing like a virtual secretary job?
i would like to know somthing about this career. i just want to know waht it would feel like to be in a office. so can someone help me find a game that i can play that is like a secretary or a buissness game.

Best answer:

Answer by 888
Simulation Games

http://www.gamedmoz.org/English/Simulation-Games.html

Give your answer to this question below!

House for Sale in Herson


Image by paukrus
House for Sale in Herson

+7 (4236) 647-642
+7 (924) 736-20-96

House for Sale in Herson


Image by paukrus
House for Sale in Herson

+7 (4236) 647-642
+7 (924) 736-20-96

www.BuyAveryRanch.com Call Now 512-423-5626 Property sold 3 Avery Ranch real estate agent, Kenn Renner with Buy Austin ( www.BuyAustin.com ) and Keller Williams Lake Travis Market Center, shows off the Avery Ranch golf course community in Austin, Texas ( http ). Call or text Kenn Renner anytime at 512.423.5626 or email me at Kenn@Buyaustin.com. Check out all the latest Avery ranch info at my exclusive website www.buyaveryranch.com . Avery Ranch is Austin, Texass premiere golf course community with 4000+ homes sprawling over 1800 acres in the city limits of Austin, Texas. Avery Ranch features an award winning 18 hole championship golf course with a full service club house, restaurant and bar. Averys scenic golf course consistently ranks in the top rated golf courses in Texas. A challenging but fair golf course, Averys oak lined fairways and greens are meticulously groomed and cared for. Dramatic lakeside fairways & distant hill country views greet golfers from around the world including celebrities such as actor Dennis Quaid who hosted several golf tournaments over the years. Avery Ranch has been a destination community for home buyers since its grand opening in 2000. Along with one of Austins premiere golf courses, Avery Ranch features a multitude of Amenity Centers that include pools, playscapes, tennis courts, and even an outdoor amphitheater. I discovered Avery Ranch during its pre-development stage and was so excited about the community and that I vowed to be Averys …

www.realtypartner.com | Your Real Estate Partner. Realty Partner publishes the largest database of Real Estate listings across the country for homebuyers and investors. Realty Partner is used by both brokers and independent buyers. Realty Partner is the most widely used homes for sale real estate source.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

www.officespaceyourway.com, We are your Shared Office Space in Columbia MD. Call Us Today at (410) 772-6317 or Visit Office Space Your Way, LLC 5550 Sterrett Place Suite 210-A Columbia, MD 21044 (410) 772-6317 www.officespaceyourway.com Office Space Your Way, LLC offers Columbia customers the best Shared Office Space products and services. Our organization specializes in printer, copier and fax, ship and receive packages and Help with hiring paperwork and other HR functions. Office Space Your Way, LLC has become Columbia MD’s Shared Office Space Industry leader. Our incredible consumer service staff is looking forward to helping you. For more information call us at (410) 772-6317
Video Rating: 5 / 5

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Exquisite custom home in the exclusive gated community of Crystal Point Estates. With 164 feet of lake frontage, this home has one of the best waterfront views in Gilbert! Over 4000 sq feet 4 bedroom, den/office, loft and 5.5 baths. Master suite with fireplace, jetted tub, double sinks, & balcony to enjoy the fabulous views. Family room with soaring ceilings. Open kitchen perfect for entertaining. Backyard features large covered patio & tropical landscaping. This exclusive subdivision offers watersking, paddle boating, wake boarding & tubing right from your own back yard. Boat dock for your boat too! Living in this home is like living a dream everyday! Close to top of the line schools, shopping, and dining. Don’t miss out on this deal of a lifetime! tour.previsite.com
Video Rating: 0 / 5

Immaculate golf course home in El Dorado Lakes. Situated on the 8th hole this home features 5 bedrooms,3 full baths, formal living & dining rooms & spacious family room w/fireplace. Chef’s dream kitchen w/granite countertops,upgraded appliances,dual ovens,island,pantry & blt-in desk. 1 bedroom & bath downstairs as well as custom built office.Master suite features seperate tub & shower,lrg closet, balcony w/views of the golf course.Resort like backyard w/ heated pebble tec pool & spa,putting green, blt-in BBQ & custom flagstone. Shutters & custom window coverings.Sunscreens & ceiling fans throughout.Community features golf, parks, tennis & basketball courts. Priced to sell fast! Wow a normal sale! Why wait for a short sale or buy a bank owned home? Close in time for the tax credit! tour.previsite.com

When I first saw this sculpture I thought it would be incredible with lightning striking. For me it is like the lightning bolts hit and the Arabian horse reared, then the Quarter horse and Thoroughbred horse took off in different directions, making this all come alive. It took me years to get this shot. It was one of the most dangerous photo shoot I have done. After years of waiting for the storms to be in the right place at the right time…. one night it happened. I was shooting in North Scottsdale Arizona and I noticed the storm down here. So I bee lined it for this location. It was back in the day before all this area way built up. None of the houses were here. The 101 was not even started yet. I was standing in the middle of Pima road it was late so no cars. Back then people stayed home when these storms hit because of all the flash flooding and dips in the roads. So here I am shooting in the middle of the road with a medal tripod. The lightning strikes were extremely close. This was shot with a 50mm lens. About a 45 sec exposure. Water was running at my feet getting me wet. In the middle of the road with water at my feet and a medal tripod and lightning hitting feet away. But this is the Shot… this is the shot I have been waiting for for years. And it is happening. So I grin and bear it and hope of for the best. I can say my heart was racing. Did not even know if I would get the shot or get killed. Well I got the shot. One on color and one in Black and white. This is my favorite. I love horses so this was a dream shot for me. Hope you enjoy it. Buy a print… save a storm chaser LOL! I tell my customers the day I get struck these prints are going to be worth a lot more than you paid for them. Not that I am hoping for it.

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Have you ever wondered what the “INITECH” office building looks like now, 10 Years after the movie “Office Space” was first released in theaters? These are NEW RARE photos I took on 5/29/2009 of the actual “INITECH” office building used in the filming of the cult-classic comedy “Office Space”. The building is located in Austin, Texas off Interstate 35 (I-35), South of Downtown. According to Mike Judge (the Director of the film) all shots in the movie were filmed in Austin except for two shots filmed in Dallas, Texas. One of those two shots was the opening credits when you briefly see a shot of busy traffic at the intersection of 635 & the North Dallas Tollway (the Dallas Galleria is located at this intersection but off to the left of the shot). I do not know what the other shot was that they filmed in Dallas, but I’d like to find out. Can you spot the cosmetic differences of the building’s exterior from when they made the movie and now, 10 years later? I expected the building to now look slightly different from the movie since set designers usually dress-up filming locations to get the necessary look and feel for their movie. I was right, the building structure itself looks the same as it did in the movie, however there are a few minor cosmetic differences. These changes were probably made shortly after they wrapped filming, bringing the building back to its original appearance. The first thing I noticed about the exterior of the building was that the big sculpture in …
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Mike Judge didn’t have to shoot Office Space in Austin. The office park that housed Initech could have been—and is—anywhere in America. Chances are, your city has one that looks awfully similar, but you’ve never really noticed it, because why would you? These kinds of buildings are designed not to be noticed. They are blandness made real.And that’s precisely why Mike Judge shot here. Obviously it was more convenient for the Austinite to shoot in his hometown, but he didn’t have to go far to find an inconspicuous office park that captured the soul-crushing atmosphere of a dead-end cubicle job.Local film critic and film professor Alison Macor spoke to just about everyone involved in Office Space for a chapter on the film in her book Chainsaws, Slackers, And Spy Kids: Thirty Years Of Filmmaking In Austin, Texas. She was a film critic at the Austin American Statesman when Judge was shooting Office Space, which was a popular time for Austin in film: Robert Rodriguez was doing The Faculty in town, Richard Linklater’s The Newton Boys had just come out. Turns out it was a bad time to be making Office Space. Not only was it an oppressively hot shoot, even by Austin standards, but Hollywood had been shocked by the success of There’s Something About Mary that summer. Fox, the studio, was looking for something similarly outrageous from Judge—described by Macor as “big, fat faces with a wide-angle lens”—and thus began what would be a continual battle with the studio over the film’s …
Video Rating: 4 / 5

www.galleria-international.com – (561) 832-4732 Looking to lease office space, restaurant / bar space or find a virtual office with a West Palm Beach, Florida address? Look no further. This prime real estate is located near the west palm beach courthouse. They offer conference room rental space and full office leasing space. Executive office suites include receptionist services and more. Virtual offices give you the best West Palm Beach office address. Don’t hesitate – lease today!
Video Rating: 0 / 5

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Stetson Valley is a Pulte Homes community in Phoenix, Arizona. For more info, please visit www.pulte.com. Thanks for watching!

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Watching Office Space


Image by niallkennedy
I played Office Space to entertain the small crowd before Tag Tuesday began.

Small office space


Image by Pepino1976
My work areas at school.

Question by confused agent 1 mo. in biz: How do real estate agents get business from builders??? NEW HOMES/CONDOS???
Hi, I’m a new agent. I’ve been in the business for almost 30 days and so far no listings, none, zip,zero–how do I get my phone to buzzzzzzzzzzzzz, I’m doing property calls like every day, want to list builder inventory homes–what should i do?

Best answer:

Answer by Real Estate Guy
Usually builders want you to work FULL TIME on their listings. Only the very small builders will take an agent on the “resale” basis.

If you want to do new homes, join your local home building association. This is where ALL the builders meet.

Add your own answer in the comments!

Question by paul: Should i buy an old home in gilbert, az or a new home in queen creek? `i want to make sure it appreciates.?
there is a home in gilbert, az that needs major repair but is in an ideal location and most likely will appreciate because there is civilization all around. there is also a home in queen creek, az that is far away from civilization but it is brand new and no repair is necessary. would a new home in queen creek appreciate as quickly as an older home in gilbert, az?

Best answer:

Answer by Blue October
old or new —nothing is appreciating right now.
make sure you do your homework …read the papers, get on line, listen to the media shows on what is going on with property values. this is not the time to think you are gonna buy and make $$$$$$….cause it aint happening here in the gold old USA right now.

good luck

What do you think? Answer below!